


Growing Old (Is Not Something I Considered)

by Chordae



Series: Din Djarin’s Guide To Fatherhood and All the Existential Crises Inbetween [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Light Angst, ManDadlorian, kind of sort of - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22047619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chordae/pseuds/Chordae
Summary: Sometimes it’s the realization that your kid is older than you that sends you tumbling over the proverbial edge.
Series: Din Djarin’s Guide To Fatherhood and All the Existential Crises Inbetween [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586989
Comments: 8
Kudos: 331





	Growing Old (Is Not Something I Considered)

It’s about a month after the whole fiasco with Moff Gideon that the realization hits him.

Their ship floats aimlessly in space, a brief bit of time off between bounties to allow themselves a mental reprieve to gather their bearings.

Din Djarin sits in the Captain’s seat, the twinkling colors of the dashboard dancing against his Beskar armor, silently observing the kid ( _his_ kid) pressed up against the cabin’s window.

The kid, begrudgingly adorable on most days and a few hairs short of a wet womp-rat on the rest, stares off into the vast expanse of space, his dark eyes reflecting the glimmering light of the stars that are light years away. His green, near-bald ears are perked up in interest, his excitement blatant in his open-mouthed, wide-eyed joy. It’s, for lack of a better term, _adorable_. The blissful innocence of the peculiar-looking creature, even after all they’d been through the past couple months, is so obvious and endearing that it makes his heart ache.

 _He_ _looks_ _so_ _young_ , Din thinks, absentminded and too busy reveling in the dream-like feel of the scene as well as relishing the brief lapse of calm wherein the kid isn’t choking himself on scattered trinkets, playing in the armory, or gnawing on loose wires. _It’s_ _hard_ _to_ _believe_ , he thinks, _that_ _a_ _creature_ _as_ _small_ _as_ _he is_ _is_ _over_ _fifty_ _years_ _old_.

Din stiffens for a moment, his mind a cacophony of noise and then quiet the next, thoughts screeching to an abrupt halt. The once blissful calm of the cabin nears eerie, the kid staring off into space as if he _is_ some young and innocent thing to behold, and Din finds himself unable to form a coherent thought, other than _whatwhythatdoesn’tmakesense_? _buthow_ -

The kid gurgles a delighted noise, his three claws scratching at the surface of the window as a stray bit of space debris floats by. A moment passes, and the kid giggles, a high-pitched, _child_ - _like_ sound. Din feels himself relax, his tensely coiled muscles unwinding as he allows his head to fall against the back of his chair, eyes diverted from the scene before him as he stares at the ceiling.

His kid is over fifty years old, he realizes.

 _Huh_.

He takes a moment for that thought to play in his head, to allow himself to take in the implications of exactly what that means.

Din Djarin has never known his own true age. Sure, he supposes, he’s got a decent grasp of his age _range_ , but it’s not always true that one retains their date of birth in between having their family slaughtered right before them and then training to become a bounty hunter.

In other words, he’s placed himself in the mid-twenties to early thirties range. Either way, the kid is still older than him by an alarming degree.

If the kid is only now considered a kid- can’t even form words, warbles and squeals at Din over everything, nonexistent words slick and loose on his tongue- then how does the kid age? What if, maybe, his species are eternal babies, or- or- their childhood is a large percentage of their life, or perhaps they’re just incredibly long lived?

Din doesn’t exactly have a frame of reference for the kid.

He leans further back in his chair, nearly to the point where he could be slightly jostled only to be knocked into a boneless heap on the ground.

Even if the kid’s species is long lived, what does that mean for Din? _The_ _kid’s_ _fifty_ - _something_ _and_ _he’s_ _just_ _barely_ _past_ _the_ _edge_ _of_ _a_ _fuzzy_ _ball_ _of_ _slobber_. He muses. _If_ _I’m_ _lucky_ , _in_ _the_ _next_ _fifty_ _years_ _he’ll_ _be_ _able_ _to_ _talk_. Din feels his lungs constrict for a moment, his hands balling into fists, the dull pain of a headache building in the back of his skull. _In_ _fifty_ _years_ _I’ll_ _be_ _lucky_ _to_ _be_ _alive_. He seethes. It’s not as if bounty hunting is a safe, healthy profession. In fact, he believes that him being alive in fifty years is beyond pushing it. He wouldn’t even bet on the next decade or so. Where does that leave the kid, he realizes? When he’s gone and long-since dead, the kid would probably be in the midst of the equivalent of his ‘terrible twos’, and what sort of life is that for a kid? To be raised by a bounty hunter, drifting in space with no definite home and no definite future, the kid’s and Din’s life constantly on the line?

Maybe it’d be worth it to settle down, he realizes. 

-But then, where would that put him as a Mandalorian? Maybe family goes beyond culture and tradition, maybe he could live as long as he can with the kid, settled down in some back-wash planet in some offset system. 

He’s about to delve into another line of thought, concerning the kid and his future, when his vision of the patchwork ceiling is suddenly obscured by the creature of his thoughts, brown eyes wider than usual and small mouth curled in an elated smile. Din realizes he’s nearly level with the ground with how far back he’s reclined in his seat, the kid obviously having the time of his life being ‘taller’ than his guardian.

(Maybe one day he will be taller than Din, but that’ll be decades from now, probably even centuries, where Din and everyone else he knows will be dead, except the little kid that-)

“Da!” The kid gurgles, clawed hands fumbling to remove Din’s helmet and slipping against the sleek surface, his tiny form practically shaking in place with pent up and unbridled excitement at the opportunity of catching him off guard.

Perhaps, he thinks, it’ll be better to focus on the present.

(At least, for now.)

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops sorry. I’m not really the best at writing angst, but I felt like this has been a problem that’s been nagging at me for awhile. He’s only going to be a father to the kid for a fraction of the kid’s life (and, shoot, if that doesn’t hurt, then I don’t know what does). Anyways, sorry that you subjected yourself to reading that.


End file.
